Silverbrow on Food

Kosher Roast

There are times when not knowing what you're doing is a very effective way of doing something well. Ignorance and naivety can be surprisingly powerful when combined with willfullness.  Proof of this was there to see on Sunday, with the launch of Kosher Roast.

I admire immensely what Amy Beilin, driving force behind Kosher Roast has achieved.  I have no doubt that setting up a pop-up is hellish: there is the sourcing; staffing; rent; cooking; health & safety; serving; washing up etc etc.  

The problems must be compounded if as in Amy's case you've never worked in a restaurant before.  But as problems go they are barely a flesh wound on the rampaging bull, on heat, in a farmyard of frigid cows, that are the requirements of being a kosher restaurant (even if it's not from one of the main kashrut authorities) and making the food taste great.

I should say at this stage that I was sitting down as more than just an intrigued but otherwise disinterested punter.  Over the last few months I've been giving Amy some thoughts.  I have no idea whether they were helpful or not, but in return for my bon mots, Amy said she wanted to buy me lunch. I decided it was a fair deal. (NB This is the first time I've ever accepted a complimentary meal whilst writing the blog. La Tasca, if you're reading, please don't let this give you false hope.)

As a reader with even the worst reading habits will know, I have a broad range of complaints on the rather niche subject of kosher food in London.  The quality is poor, the variety is limited, the costs are high, the staff are rude and passion is non-existent.

And then there is Kosher Roast.  

Starters were a tiny chicken and leek pie, accompanied by a scotch egg (turkey, not pork, natch) with a mustard mayo.  The farmyard conceit was carried through to the basket of hay that everything nestled in.  I've always wanted to make a scotch egg because deep fried sausage around a boiled egg sounds so very tasty.  I'm sure it's not the same as one made with a piggy sausage, but let's just accept the fact: this was a very tasty dish.  The coating had crunch, I'm pretty sure it was made from panko breadcrumbs, around a very moist and slightly spicy sausage mix.  Ideally, I'd have liked the egg to be a bit runny, like the ones I've spotted at The Bull & Last.  The chicken and leek pie was similarly good, although at little more than a mouthful, didn't leave much of a lasting impression.

The main course was roast beef, goose fat (imported from France because it's not sold here for some reason) roasted potatoes, mini-beets, kale and horseradish.  Again, it was very good.  The beef was nicely rare, wih great flavour, although I wouldn't have said no to a few crunchy bits.  I fear the gravy might have been thickened with corn-starch or something, but let's swiftly move on.  

The roast potatoes were almost as good as Silverbrowess's who is widely, and rightly, famed for her roasties.  The beets added a touch of sweetness, helped along by the impressively garlic-laden kale.  The yorkshire pudding was ok - it's always a bit tough making them without milk and I've never been the greatest fan anyway.  Overall, it was a lovely plate of food.

Dessert is rarely anything of note in kosher restaurants, because as with the yorkshire pud, there's the problem of dairy with meat. Amy came up with three little dark chocolate petit fours that were wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon.  They were surprisingly tasty, in particular the gooey cookie and the cornflake crisp.

My gripes are minor and overall, we were served very good food.  I think it was up to the standards of many solid, local restaurants and reminded me of typical decent, pub/restaurant fare.  I have yet to have a meal that was of this high quality in any kosher restaurant in London.  

What I find almost more intriguing than the food, was the way she succeeded in getting the whole package right.  The venue was a little bit funky and edgy (interesting artwork in the men's loos for example).  There was a thoughtful drinks list, with good wines at reasonable prices and four house cocktails - unheard of in any other kosher restaurant.  

I'm well aware that catering a set menu for two days is very different to running a restaurant. The waitresses I'm sure were all friends.  Some suppliers would be difficult, but others would cut you some slack because they know this is a short-lived venture, more for fun than profit.  Despite those caveats Amy has set a new bar for kosher dining - which in some regards isn't all that difficult.  What Amy has achieved is doing something different with kosher food and has made a roaring success of it. For so long we've been limited to a cynical choice of poor quality, uninspiring food and iniquitous prices.

Kosher Roast has ably demonstrated that passion goes a long way.  I would hope that other restaurateurs who serve the kosher market will experience Kosher Roast.  They will notice the slightly alternative crowd, the brilliant branding and most importantly, the passion for what is on the plate and served to paying customers.  As that great arbiter of kashrut, Roy Castle liked to say, dedication's what you need.

Google Maps

Kosher Roast
The Shop,
75 Chamberlayne Road, 
Kensal Rise, 
London, NW10 3ND

The Deli West One

As AA Gill recently lamented (£) it is remarkably difficult to get a decent salt beef sandwich in London. As I regularly lament, it's remarkably difficult to get any decent kosher food in London, let alone a salt beef sandwich.  But a host of new openings suggest the worm might be about to turn.  Kosher Roast is a pop-up focused on great roast beef and Mishkins WC2 is the latest from the Polpo hothouse.

Whilst Kosher Roast brands itself as selling great food that is kosher, Mishkins is all about the Jewish/New York Deli experience.  The difference between kosher and Jewish is important. Kosher food basically means it’s got a religious stamp of authority, which for some is very important.  Jewish food is that which is culturally influenced by the fine canon of Jewish cuisine, whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi. It is complicated and if you want to really understand it and own one of the greatest cookbooks out there, then I strongly recommend Claudia Roden.

The others are yet to open but The Deli West One has now been open for a couple of weeks and it’s all about great kosher deli food.  Based on my visit, I think they’re getting into their stride.

Being a martyr to kosher food I tried a few things: the chopped liver; a salt beef sandwich and a pastrami sandwich. I also had some pickles. As I said after lunch, the meat was great, other elements less so.

Unlike some, I'm no maven of pastrami - it is a resolutely US dish - but I like to think that I know my salt beef. I also know what I like and both the pastrami and salt beef at West One were good.  The pastrami was moist, a bit spicy and a little bit sweet.  The salt beef was also moist - I think more so than the pastrami - but didn’t hide its salty light under a bushel.  They instinctively started to carve from a depressingly lean brisket, but a request for something with more flavour (read fat) resulted in a very good sandwich.

I was impressed with the chopped liver. Whilst I generally err towards slightly sweeter chopped liver - copious amounts of onions fried in schmaltz are the answer - theirs was much better than most commercial chopped liver.  That having been said, they garnish their liver with a red onion jam and crispy fried shallots which add texture and sweetness, so eaten together were very good.

The pickled cucumbers - half sours - were fine.  I think they’ll appeal to US diners but I’m less certain how the Brits will respond.  With our new greens and pickled dills, we’re used to vinegar based brines, rather than the salty ones our American cousins prefer.  It’ll be interesting to see how they go down over time.

Those were the good things.  On to the less so good.  Two items stuck out: the bread and the service. The bread was supplied by Grodzinski, a kosher baker that has been around for ever and frankly the bread tasted as if it was from their inaugural batch.  They call it rye, but actually it's caraway seed, rather than proper black rye bread.  It was horribly stale.  This is a fairly heinous crime given that much ink has been spilled as to whether what makes the sandwiches at places like Katz in New York so good is the quality of the meat or the quality of the bread.  I appreciate that at this stage it might be a tall order for West One to bake their own bread, but there are enough kosher bakers in London that they should be able to track down something much better than what they currently have - or get it made bespoke for them.

The service was also not the best.  I don't think this was an attempt to recreate the miserable sods who famously served at the now defunct Bloom's or the exceptionally rude staff at near-neighbour Reubens.  Rather, I got the impression they were very stressed.  Understandable as it's still early days and they seemed to be having problems with their till.  I got chatting to one of the owners who seemed a thoroughly nice chap, but it was the staff, the guys and girls on the floor who seemed a bit flummoxed.

They’re about to face stiff competition from Mishkins for attention of those who aren’t worried about whether they keep kosher or not but want deli.  Whilst I generally love their restaurants, the Polpo guys appear to be colonising London a bit (I'd love to know how they've managed to roll out so many successful restaurants so quickly) and I’m supporting the under dog in this fight.

I don't necessarily come to this review unbiased.  I want them to do well.  I want all restaurants to do well, more good food and more people employed are worthy goals. But I really want there to be a great kosher restaurant in London and at the moment West One is our best hope.

Google Maps

The Deli West One
51 Blandford Street,
London, W1U 7HJ,
UK

What others think

Youngandfoodish - the salt beef sandwich...though nicely rimmed with fat, was a tad tough and dry and the rye was limp, with no oomph in the middle and little chew-and-tear in the crust.  The hot dog was plump and meaty, with the right quotient of garlic and what tasted like paprika.

Salt beef

Better salt beef should be more widely available.  It is a cheap cut of meat ooh how age of austerity, that doesn't take much hard work, ideal because I just don't have any time to cook and yet current offerings are pretty mediocre.

True, hope might be on the horizon, West One Deli for those that keep kosher (and assuming they get round to opening, there have been interminable delays) and Mishkin's from the irrepresable team behind Polpo et al for those that don't.  

So limited supply has left me trying to perfect my salt beef recipe for sometime and I think I've now done it.  Using the recipe below, I ended up with some of the most delicious salt beef I've ever had the privilege to taste.  It is a bit saltier than commercial salt beef but far from too salty - it gives a pleasant tang, helped no doubt by the aromatics.

I feel heretical saying it, but my efforts were no thanks to two of my heroes.  My first attempt was a salty disaster - the only time that the now veggie Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has let me down.  I then read Claudia Roden's seminal work on Jewish cookery, but was uninspired by her recipe, especially the rather amorphous 'pickling spices' she proposes. 

I moved on to Fergus Henderson at the suggestion of a commenter on the blog.  I blithely followed him, until I received another comment on the blog saying his brine was far too salty.  Pah, I thought, what does this naif though compared to Henderson.  

I then re-read Henderson and realised he was recommending the same concentration of cure for a chicken as for salt beef.  This seemed a bit wrong and perhaps Nick Loman was worth listening to.

So I pimped Henderson's recipe, or rather I wimped out and watered it down.  For 4 days I had a 15% cure and for 1 day I had a 7.5% cure.  I suppose you could make life easier by just going for a 13.5% cure or 540g of salt to 4l of water.  (These percentages refer to the quantity of salt to water in the cure, where water is 100%.)

I didn't use salt-petre and didn't think it was any the worse for it.  The reason for using salt-petre is to ensure the beef doesn't lose its pink colour as a result of the brining process.  I didn't find the colour a problem.  The inside was brown, a bit like the centre of smoked brisket - rather delicious actually.

So here's what I did.

Please note that in total this recipe takes 5 days to brine and is cooked on the 6th day - although most of that time a lump of meat is sitting in some salty water and does not require much work from you. Just don't try to make it a few hours before guests arrive.

You will need a large non-metallic container to cure the meat in.

3.5kg brisket - make sure your butcher leaves some of the fat on it.

4 day brine

• 400g caster sugar
• 600g sea salt
• 12 juniper berries
• 12 cloves
• 12 black peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 4l water

5th day brine

• 4l water

Cooking the beef

• 2 bay leaves
• Bunch of thyme
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 celery stick, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to the boil.  Then allow to cool thoroughly.

Once cooled, pour the brine over the beef.  Make sure the beef is fully submerged, you may well need to weigh it down.

Leave it for 4 days.

On the 5th day, add a further 4l of water.

A note on curing & refrigeration: I don't refrigerate mine whilst it's curing because this is a preserving process afterall.  I leave it in a nice cool part of the house.  If you do refrigerate, bear in mind it will slow the curing process down, so for the same flavour you'll need to make it more concentrated or brine for longer.

On the 6th day - cooking day - remove the beef from the brine and rinse well under running water.

Put the beef in a pot with herbs and vegetables and cover with fresh water.  Cook it for about 3-3.5 hours.  You want it to be a rolling boil and by that I mean: the water's gently bubbling rather than furiously splashing for most of the cooking time.

The kosher sausage collective

Do you want to buy some kosher sausage casings with me?

I ask because I do again and the quantities I need to buy them in are enormous, much more than I can use.

The hardest part it seems of making kosher sausages is sourcing the cases.  Until earlier this year, Devro manufactured the only kosher sausage casings that I've ever been able to get hold of.  However, they no longer make them because they cannot source the hides they need to make the collagen casings.

I've been able to track down a caddy of these casings and rather than see three quarters going to waste, I'd like to split them with other like minded cooks, who want to make sausages.  

If you are interested, then reply in the comments below or email or tweet me.

A final thought, what on earth are butchers going to do when the casings finally run out?  I rang four suppliers that, according to a helpful gentleman at Devro, might still have some stock.  Only two still had any casings in and both of those pointed out there wasn't much stock left. 

With a sausage shortage looming, the winter surely only days away, the only answer must be for us to make our own.  Away to your mincers.

Rosh Hashanah 2011

The cooking fest appears to have come out of nowhere this year.  Things are made a bit more complicated - or rather cooking intensive - because the two days of Rosh Hashanah are immediately followed by Shabbat.  This requires an awful lot of planning, preparation, cooking and refrigerating in the run-up to Wednesday night, when the festival starts.

I have decided to try my hand at salting beef again.  After my earlier over-salted flop, I've decided to go with the St John's recipe of 150g of salt per litre.  I'm going to be curing it for 5 days.  I'll report back.  

I've also got some new green cucumbers pickling in the fridge.  I've been playing with my recipe, if this one works I'll write it up.

With 15 people to feed for one of the meals I am going to go with bollito misto yet again.  I can't get enough of it, I hope they feel the same.

At some point I'm going to do some roast lamb.  I've been trying to figure out if it's possible to weave in two of the key foods of Rosh Hashanah, apple and honey - perhaps a cider and honey glaze?  It may end up all a bit too sickly. Or, perhaps, a sharp cider might just work with the sweet honey and slightly fatty lamb.

I've been trying to figure out what veg and salads to do.  I'm quite tempted by radish and schmaltz, which is a traditional ashkenazi recipe.  I've never eaten it and it sounds a bit horrific, so I'm gruesomely curious.

I've been delving back into some of the classics and have come out inspired.  So I'm planning on making Sally Clarke's baked beans (or lentils) and honey roasted endives and parsnips, Stephen Bull's red cabbage salad, the St John's Bread & Wine salad and Orbs of Joy (onions roasted in chicken stock). Although I know I want to make them, I don't yet know which meal they'll be deployed at.

If I can pull my finger out in time, I might try my hand at baking cholla.

You can be sure that my new favourite dessert will make an appearance, as will some apple and honey sorbet, fresh figs and pomegranate.  And some dates.  Oh and I'd better not forget the Bendicks, the ne pas ultra of after-dinner indulgence if you keep kosher and therefore don't eat dairy products immediately after eating meat.

Bea's Vegan Chocolate Cake

I don't really bother with desserts.  It's not that I don't have a sweet tooth - I do, as much as the next fat man.  Rather, I have a technical problem with them. Specifically, the prohibition under the laws of kashrut to mix milk and meat.  

Whilst we're banned from combining milk and meat in recipes - nyet to chicken kiev for example - we also have to wait an extended period of time between eating meat and eating dairy products.  The gap I observe is 3 hours.  Which is why I don't really bother with dessert.  Dessert is all about milk, cream or butter, so really what is the point.

Some people get around this by going to town on the multitude of substitutions available but I consider them to be abominations.  I also think that generally after a relatively heavy meal, some fresh fruit or sorbet is not the end of the world.

But I have hankered for some time after a decent dessert that I can pull out of the bag when necessary. Something beyond lokshen pudding (bread and butter pudding, without the bread or butter) or almond cake in orange syrup (a Sefardi/Spanish favourite).  And I just may have found one in Tea with Bea: Recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury.

As the name suggests, this is the first book from Bea Vo, owner of the eponymous Bea's of Bloomsbury. Over the years of blogging, tweeting and eating I've got to know Bea fairly well.  I can tell you this about her: her cakes are outstanding, she's a voracious collector of cookbooks, she's a great source for sourcing hard to find produce and she knows her way around the restaurant industry.  I implore you to try her cakes, if that fails buy her book so you can try them yourself, or if that fails, just follow her on Twitter.  Unlike others, she doesn't spend her time self-promoting and is happy to engage in fairly broad ranging debate, when she's not baking.

So, I bought the book because I'm a fan and an acquaintance.  I also was hoping to learn a bit more about baking from it because I haven't had much experience and I'm not very good at it.  

Flicking through the book from back to front, as I always do with new cookbooks, my eye was caught by the Vegan Chocolate Cake.  At first, I was a bit horrified.  Bea is not a lady who panders to whims and I feared she had sold out to the whiny-brigade.  It then dawned on me that I have a claim to be a member of that particular army and Bea might just be a saviour and perhaps I could overlook my substitution snobbishness and accept soy milk in a recipe.

The cake was a revelation.  The sponge tasted of Oreos - a good thing - and the icing was simply very rich chocolate.  It was delicious.  

I should admit that whilst it tasted lovely, mine looked like a disaster, a reflection of a few issues I had baking it.  For example, after making the chocolate mousse filling/topping, it looked like someone had staged a dirty protest in our kitchen.  Further, being an impatient baker and egged on by a young child, I decided to layer on the chocolate icing before the cake had fully cooled.  Therefore I cut the sponge before it was cool and put chocolate on top of warm sponge.  Not very accomplished.

As per Bea's note at the start of the recipe, you don't need to bother telling people it's vegan when you give it to them, it might put them off.  Then again, this does have its advantages, such as there's more for you to eat and in my experience the sponge benefits from a being a day or so old.

The recipe I give below is for my version of the chocolate cake.  The main difference with the one that Bea has in the book is that I'm lazy.  I didn't include the raspberries, strawberries or crystallised violets she suggests incorporating into the mousse.  They do sound good though.

Serves 8-12

For the cake

• 23cm round cake pan, greased and baselined with parchment paper
• 275g plain flour
• 100g natural cocoa powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 450ml unsweetened soy milk
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar
• 320g caster sugar
• 320ml sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract

For the mousse

• 800g good quality dark chocolate, chopped (or in my case smashed) into pea-sized pieces
• 600ml hot water
• lots of ice - I used about 400g

Preheat the oven to 160C, gas mark 4.

Put the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl and sift twice through a sieve.

In a separate bowl, whisk the soya milk, vinegar, sugar, oil and vanilla extract.  Pour into the flour mixture and stir until well combined.  I took that to mean a consistent colour throughout the mixture.

Spoon the lot into the prepared cake pan and bake in the preheated oven for 40-55 minutes.  Bea suggests that you can test when it's done by inserting a wooden skewer into the centre of the cake.  If cooked, the skewer should be crumb-free when you pull it out.  She also says that when the cake is ready, if you press the middle of the cake it should spring back, rather than sink.  If it does sink, or your skewer is crumb-laden, return the cake to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes and check again.

Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan, probably with the aid of a knife and cool on a rack for 1 hour.

While it's cooling you can make the mousse.

Put the chocolate in a large, wide heatproo bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Don't let the base of the bowl touch the water.  Leave the chocolate until it is melted, then stir with a wooden spoon until smooth and glossy.

Remove from the heat.

Pour the hot water into the bowl of chocolate and mix until nice and smooth.

Sit the bowl in a dish filled with ice cubes.  Using an electric whisk, quickly whisk the chocolate and water mixture thoroughly and quickly until a stiff mousse forms.

Don't forget my warning about the dirty protest.  The kitchen re-decoration wasn't helped by my mousse not thickening.  So, as per Bea's suggestion, I melted more chocolate and whisked that in quickly and suddenly it became a mousse.

She suggests that if it gets too thick, you can add a touch more warm water, or espresso, or whisky to thin it out.

Then cut the cake horizontally.  She suggests 3 layers, but I didn't risk it and opted for two.  Then again, mine was in a near state of collapse given my haste and refusal to let it fully cool.

You then spread the mousse between the layers and on top of the cake.  If you're using the various berries and sweets, now's the time to add them.

Eat and enjoy.

Gefiltefest 2011 programme is rather tasty

I know I said was excited before, but having just received the (draft) final programme (pdf) for Gefiltefest 2011 from Michael Leventhal, the organiser, now I'm really excited.

For far too long I have harped on about the parlous state of kosher food in the UK, feeling like I was screaming into a void.  It turns out there are others out there who actually care and Michael has corralled them for the day.

There are almost too many interesting things to contain in one measly post, but I'll have a go:

Adam Taub's talking on 'Have you eaten? 4 meals that transformed the Jewish People'.  You may not have heard of Adam but he's a great speaker, brilliantly engaging.

Rose Prince - yes as in that Rose Prince, and that one and that one, yes her - is doing a cookery demonstration on Jewish flatbreads.  I'm guessing there's more to this session than just pitta.

There are sessions on bee-keeping, the politics of food, the Torah's approach to farming and a demonstration of Tunisian cooking.

More esoterically there's an event on Japanese Jewish cooking.  Eh?  And a session called 'Reel Food and Sex: Food on Film'.  Ahem.

Back to the straight and narrow, there's the all important tasting session comparing staples like bagels, cheesecake and challah.

And finally, I may even be doing the odd session.  Oh ok then, I'll stop being bashful.  I am doing three sessions, one on the current state of kosher restaurants entitled a little bit provocatively 'Kosher restaurants are rubbish', I'm compering the tasting mentioned above and hosting a film screening of three shorts.

UPDATED: You can download the final programme here (pdf).

I will update this post, especially once the programme is finalised. 

Gefiltefest will be taking place at the LJCC on Sunday 22 May 2011.  Tickets and further info are available here.